


Tripping On Skies, Sipping Waterfalls

by untune_the_sky



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: AU of an RPG, Alternate Realities, Alternate Universe, Dreams, Drinking, Drinking to Cope, Emotional Instability, Loss, M/M, Multiverse, Past Character Death, Surprise! - Freeform, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, potential alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 09:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6899635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untune_the_sky/pseuds/untune_the_sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>"My youth — my youth is yours.<br/>A truth so loud, you can't ignore."<br/>"<i>Youth</i>" — Troye Sivan<br/></p>
</div><br/>He’d had the dream again last night. There’d been a party; the Bad Movie Science Drinking Game had taken center stage. Clint drank far more than he should have, but that was about par for the course these days.
            </blockquote>





	Tripping On Skies, Sipping Waterfalls

**Author's Note:**

> So this isn't my usual fare, I know, but my good friend [Michael](http://archiveofourown.org/users/notyourgold/pseuds/notyourgold) wrote a ficlet based on an RPG we've been in for years. The RPG went through a massive reboot last year, so we wound up giving up/losing a ship of which we were both very fond. Obviously, once I read what he'd written, I had to write a ficlet of my own in response. This is a companion piece to his work Clean. The RPG we're in is [X-Project](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page) over on LJ (it's been going for thirteen years now!) and the plot that broke our hearts is [The Dark Phoenix Saga](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Dark_Phoenix_Saga), as brainstormed by our co-players Mack and Dex. Feel free to poke around. If you hit up the communications comm or the logs comm before February of 2015, you'll probably be able to find some of the interactions we had going between Clint and Gabriel then.
> 
> Note: The idea behind this is basically that the multiverse is still sort of unstable after the DPS, which allowed our two respective characters to literally meet in their dreams and then... sort of... merge. Ish. :) I try not to think about the multiverse too much, y'know? All the characters mentioned in here as part of eXcalibur or X-Force are actually PCs in X-Project. (And, obligatory plug: The game's always accepting applications. Check out the wiki linked above. <3)
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoy!
> 
> (PS: The title comes from the song quoted in the summary... that song will probably be making appearances in other works I write because it's the one I currently love best.)

He’d had the dream again last night. There’d been a party; the Bad Movie Science Drinking Game had taken center stage. Clint drank far more than he should have, but that was about par for the course these days. He tried not to think about it, tried not to see the patterns he was falling into. They were familiar, but he’d always seen them from the outside — first with his dad, then with Barney.

Clint knew what road he was traveling down. He knew, and he wanted to think that he’d be able to make himself stop, but he’d lost something — the motivation, maybe. Or the will to make himself be a better person. He’d watched Gabriel die and it was like something inside of his chest had curled up and died, too. He hadn’t been on that mission, there’d been no need for a scientist — but he could’ve been there. He should’ve been there. Maybe... maybe he could’ve done something, helped somehow, changed the course of events. Instead, he’d come back from his mid-morning practice with Ev and been snagged by Wanda almost immediately.

She’d told him, voice soft and words frank, what had happened. He’d watched the videofeed, so helpfully provided by X-Force once they were sure he wasn’t going to completely lose his shit, and then quietly exited the building.

The thing was, he’d wanted his own team. Clint had wanted his own team, so he’d disregarded every inclination he’d had to join up with Xavier’s spies and founded eXcalibur. He could have worked with Gabriel, with all of them, but he’d chosen to focus on the technology, the magic, the ‘weird shite.’ He’d snagged the couple X-Forcers who were better at weird shite than he was, since he liked his science best, and they’d gone off to have fun with pocket dimensions and accidental time travel.

There was a thought.

But no, Clint couldn’t fuck with the timeline; the universe always righted itself — there was always a price to pay that wound up being worse than you’d’ve thought it’d be. He couldn’t fuck with alternate dimensions either. God only knew what kind of shit he might stumble into. Yeah, he might find some Gabriel somewhere, but that guy — that guy wouldn’t be _his_ Gabriel.

Whoever he’d taken to bed while the party still raged in the living room the night before stirred next to him — nothing overt, but a shift of muscle. He clenched his jaw, but otherwise remained still. Then the bed dipped as they changed position, sat up. It took them a moment to stand, but Clint kept his breathing even, feigning sleep. It would be easier this way, if they left without having to have some kind of awkward, stilted conversation. He wasn’t up for more than a one night stand. He just couldn’t — he just... no.

Whoever it was, they grabbed some clothes and crept out of his room. Clint figured he’d give them a good few minutes before making noises like he was waking up. That would undoubtedly be enough to hurry them on their way.

In the end, it hurried them up all right — sure it did. Right into his bathroom.

Which — rude.

But whatever.

Clint rubbed his palm over the scruff on his face. He’d need to shave if he wanted to avoid the uneven beard growth he could feel coming on. It’d been a couple days since he bothered taking a razor and some Barbasol to his face. He probably looked halfway homeless at this point. Not exactly the best way to present himself to his teammates. Luckily, he was only one third of eXcal’s leadership team, so Jennie and Ev could handle the whole ‘looking respectable’ side of things while Clint handled the ‘drink yourself into a stupor and have meaningless sex with other mansion residents’ side. It’d been working out really well for him for the past eight months.

It’d been over a year since that mission, since Gabriel died.

That dream, though.

That dream got him every time.

Maybe it would’ve been different if everything else had been different. But Clint was going on thirty now. He’d been with Gabriel for over a decade — first love, last love. Should’ve been a forever kind of love. He guessed it was, since it still hurt so damn much. Clint’s chest ached as he thought about it, thought back to the way the dream opened. That first morning — that accidental morning. It shouldn’t have happened — _they_ shouldn’t have happened. But it had, they had, and it’d been good. They were good together, balanced one another out.

Who was gonna keep him from spiraling down the rabbit hole now?

No one, that’s who. Which is why he was where he was.

Tasha tried her best, but it just wasn’t the same. She had her own worries to deal with — and she’d been there, on the mission. That X-Force op that’d changed everything, that’d fundamentally shifted the entirety of Clint’s world several feet to the right and left him feeling like he’d wound up in the wrong time, the wrong place, the wrong body — the wrong life.

Everything was wrong now.

Still, he shuffled out into the kitchenette, attempted to be civil enough to see if whoever’d dashed into the shower wanted some coffee. He didn’t get a response. They turned the water on instead. Whatever. If they were gonna use up all the hot water, they could get their own coffee. Hitting the button, he stared into the middle distance, eyes unfocused, until the pot was full. Pulling the carafe off the machine, he took the whole thing with him into the living room.

Somebody’d left a note, but he didn’t bother reading it. Instead, he let himself settle back into the cushions, put a thin accent pillow on his chest, and sit the coffee pot there. It only took a few seconds for the heat from the carafe to sink through the pillow. Once it had, it began radiating through his chest, warming him up a little. He wanted to drink it, the coffee. He wanted that particular bitterness to overwhelm and subsume the flavor of old whiskey and someone’s cigarettes that lingered in his mouth. He didn’t usually smoke, but it’d seemed like the thing to do last night. Reaching for the remote, he flicked on the television, then tossed it back onto the chair beside the couch.

The ambient heat from the pot didn’t help the ache in his chest, but that was fine. Nothing really helped that — nothing except letting himself forget the real world for a little while, nothing but drifting back into the dream. Because in the dream, they were young. In the dream, the whole damn world lay sprawled at their feet. In the dream, they had the rest of their lives to look forward to — together.

In the dream, he knew that they were going to live forever.

Clint let it wash over him, knew it wasn’t the best idea when there was somebody else in the suite, but he did it anyway. He didn’t care. They could deal. So he focused on the haze in his mind, let himself drift in it as he remembered the dream. If he let himself just enjoy it, if he wasn’t a stickler for details, he sometimes stayed in it for what felt like hours. Laughing, teasing, stealing kisses. In the way of dreams, the scene shifted without any real kind of continuity. It didn’t have to make sense. From the morning on the couch to the afternoon in the bed — wherever, whenever.

He tried to just let it ride, but something always pulled him out. Something always caught his attention and sent up an inevitable flash of _nonono — this isn’t right_. And Clint always woke up, that ache in his chest a dull throb, even more noticeable because for a few brief moments, it had been gone.

In his mind, as he let the dream replay, his consciousness tried to snag on odd things, small things that he’d been able to disregard while actually asleep. He chose to ignore them now, chose to listen to Gabriel’s voice as he asked the question he asked every single time.

“Where’ve you been?”

He asked it like Clint was the one who’d been gone, like Clint had been missing and suddenly reappeared. He asked that question and Clint answered. He never knew what was going to come out of his mouth. Something silly, something cute, something sweet. He never paid attention to his own words, focused instead on Gabriel. Surprise and pleasure mingled in his expression. If he was feeling particularly sentimental, Clint might almost be convinced it was delight — a bewildered sort of delight, like when you stumble upon something you’d resigned yourself to never seeing again. Like when you can reach out to touch it, whatever it might be, and it remains the same as it ever was.

“Hi,” Clint said this time. That wasn’t an actual answer, but he didn’t think it mattered.

“Hi,” Gabriel replied, still with that look on his face.

Clint let himself go, let himself forget the real world, let himself float off.

Skin on skin, t-shirts sliding off, sheets around his thighs, Gabriel’s lips against his own. Nothing else mattered.

He got lost in it, allowed himself to get lost.

So it startled him when the bathroom door’s lock clicked, when the door itself opened. He sat up a bit, kept the coffee pot from tipping onto the floor, and turned around.

But —  

But he was impossible, the person standing in the doorway. Gabriel, wrapped in a towel, his hair still damp. Gabriel, alive. Gabriel, his eyes widening.

Clint felt it like a palm-strike to the sternum, felt his breath rush out of him on a silent exhale, felt the whole goddamn universe tilt sideways for a second time in his life.

He said the first thing that popped into his head, the words yanked out of him by something he didn’t understand even as his mouth quirked upward at the corners.

“Hey,” Clint smiled, breathless but unconcerned. “Where’ve you been?”


End file.
